SEOUL, 2016

Everyone in the Seoul Circle knew that Yang Hyunsuk made his first fortune the dirty way by bringing down The Seo Bank in the early seventies, but in the three decades since, the efforts of his wife, Yang Eunji, on behalf of the right charities had burnished the Yang name into one of the respectable family in Seoul and East Asia High society. Every Thursday, right after the regular book club (or should I say, gossip club) at the model-turned-socialite's home, Kim Dahye, Yang Eunji held a bible study luncheon for her closest friends in her bedroom, and Yung Eunjung was sure to attend.

Eunji's palatial bedroom was not actually in the sprawling glass-and-steel structure everyone living along Pyeongchang-dong district nicknamed the "Star Trek House". Instead, on the advice of her family's security team, the bedroom was hidden away in the pool pavilion, a white travetine fortress that spanned the swimming pool like a postmodern Taj Mahal.  To get there, you either had to follow the footpath that wound along the coral rock gardens or take the shortcut through the service wing. Eunjung always preferred the quicker route, since she assiduously avoided the sun to maintain her porcelain-white complexion, and also, as Eunjungs oldest friend, she considered herself exempt from the formalities of waiting at the front door, being announced by the butler, and all that nonsense. Besides, Eunjung enjoyed passing through the kitchens. The ahjummas squatting over enamel double boilers would always open the lids for Eunjung to sniff the smoky medicinal herbs being brewed for Eunji's husband (“natural ,” as he called it), and the kitchen maids gutting fish in the courtyard would fawn over how youthful Mrs.Yung still looked for sixty, what with her fashionably shagged chin-length hair and her unwrinkled face (before furiously debating, the moment she was out of earshot, what expensive new cosmetic procedure Mrs. Yung must have endured).

By the time Eunjung arrived at Carol’s bedroom, the Bible study regulars—Gong Minhye, Kang Dabin, and Baek Dahyeon—would be assembled and waiting. These longtime friends would sprawl languorously about the room, analyzing the Bible verses assigned in their study guides. The place of honor on Eunji's Koryo dynasty huanghuali, a rare type of rosewood, bed was always reserved for Eunjung for even though this was Eunji’s house and she was the one married to the billionaire financier, Eunji still deferred to her. This was the way things had been since their childhood as neighbors growing up on Gangnam-gu, mainly because, coming from a family of prosecutors, Eunji had always felt inferior to Eunjung, whose family is one of the most affluent in Seoul (The others also kowtowed to her, because even among these exceedingly well-married ladies, Eunjung had trumped them all by becoming Madam Yung Jaehwan.)

Today’s lunch started off with braised quail and abalone over hand-pulled noodles, and Minhye (married to the rubber magnate Gong Byunghee but born a Choi, of the Choi Group Chois) fought to separate the starchy noodles while trying to find 1 Timothy in her King James Bible. With her bobbed hair and her rimless reading glasses perched at the tip of her nose, she looked like the principal of a girls’ school. At sixty-four, she was the oldest of the ladies, and even though everyone else was on the New American Standard, Minhye always insisted on reading from her version, saying, “I went to convent school and was taught by nuns, you know, so it will always be King James for me.” Tiny droplets of garlicky broth splattered onto the tissue-like page, but she managed to keep the good book open with one hand while deftly maneuvering her ivory chopsticks with the other. Dahyeon, meanwhile, was busily flipping through her Bible—the latest issue of South Korea Tatler. Every month, she couldn’t wait to see how many pictures of her daughter Ahreum—the celebrated “Baek Foods heiress”—were featured in the “Soirées” section of the magazine. Dahyeon herself was a fixture in the social pages, what with her Kabuki-esque makeup, tropical-fruit-size jewels, and over-teased hair.

“Omo, Eunji! Tatler devoted two full pages to your Christian Helpers fashion gala!” Dahyeon exclaimed.

“Already? I didn’t realize it would come out so quickly,” Eunji remarked.

Unlike Dahyeon, she was always a bit embarrassed to find herself in magazines, even though editors constantly fawned over her “classic South Korean beauty looks.” Eunji simply felt obligated to attend a few charity galas every week as any good born-again Christian should, and because her husband kept reminding her that “being Mother Teresa is good for business.

Dahyeon scanned the glossy pages up and down. “That Ahn Aera has really put on weight since her Mediterranean cruise, hasn’t she? It must be those all-you-can-eat buffets—you always feel like you have to eat more to get your money’s worth. She better be careful—all those Ahn women end up with fat ankles.”

“I don’t think she cares how fat her ankles get. Do you know how much she inherited when her father died? I heard she and her five brothers got seven hundred million each,” Dabin said from her chaise lounge.

“Is that all? I thought Aera had at least a billion.” Dahyeon sniffed. “Hey, so strange, how come there’s no picture of your pretty niece Jihyo? I remember all the photographers swarming around her that day.”

“Those photographers were wasting their time. Jihyo’s pictures are never published anywhere. Her mother made a deal with all the magazine editors back when she was a teenager,” Eunjung explained.

“Why on earth would she do that?”

“Don’t you know my husband’s family by now? They would rather die than appear in print,” Eunjung said.

“What, have they become too grand to be seen minglin